The Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy wrote this poem with a very evident chronological disruption midway through the poem. Unlike most poets who keep their poems in sequential order to maintain suspense throughout the poem, Hardy seemed to believe that the subject of the Titanic was so well known that there was not any reason to keep the readers in sus-pense of what impending doom awaited the Titanic. Instead, he commenced his poem with a description of the Titanic at present: "grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent"(line 9). Then he proceeds to the "fashioning"(line 16) of the famous ship and continues to that famous April evening when the "consummation"(line 33) of the two "titanic" masses oc-curred--the grand ship made from human hands and the silent iceberg made by the "Im-manent Will"(line 18). Hardy does not confine himself inside the walls of set syllables per verse; every stanza has a different number of syllables in each verse. In the first part of his poem, the rhythm is very fascinating. With proper uses of caesuras, stresses and slacks, Hardy seems to capture the solitude of the sea that he is de-scribing with his steady, gentle sway of words, a "rhythmic tidal lyre"(line 6). While reading this poem, the words se
Humans thought themselves to be so evolved that they were above Him. God, on the other hand, heard these vain remarks and decided to play a game with the people. God challenged the human's creation of the greatest mass on the water with His own. There-fore, He played with the humans "gigantic toy" with his own water toy--a great iceberg. Therefore, as a small child would do, He smashed them together with some sort of a de-structive nature: (VIII) "And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shad-owy silent distance grew the Iceberg too." (lines 22-24) Hence, "the Spinner of the Years"(line 31), another metaphor used by Hardy to refer to the 'supreme being' as a vengeful God; upon hearing the vain cries of man clamoring, "I'm the king on the world!" as in the movie "Titanic" God responds as in the poem, with the event when God said "now!"(line 32) and renders unto humanity the knowledge that He is the ultimate King of everything. Accordingly, God sends this vain g! Hardy takes more of an adversative approach toward the story of the Titanic than most people think of or 'choose' to think of when they hear of the tragedy. Some people want the story to be told through a tragic, yet romantic, point of view that relates the trag-edy of the men, women, and children who were lost on that
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 878
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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